The Magic of Dance

Please enjoy this excerpt from my short story, The Dancer:

The room made all of my senses work overtime to function normally. “Do you see how powerful that woman is?” Sister McLeod said. It was difficult to hear her over the loud throbbing of music and cheering. The darkness of the club and the flashing lights made everything even more disorienting.

“Powerful?” I shouted back. I couldn’t believe she had talked me into coming to this place. I must have seen the club dozens of times from the freeway as I drove home from work. It was our local strip club. I was sitting in a strip club! I felt dirty and uncomfortable. Sister McLeod did not. We made a strange pair, we were obviously two conservatively dressed, clean, white upper-middle-class wives sitting at the rail of a common strip club. I was scandalized! But part of me was having some genuine fun.

“Yes! Powerful!” She beamed and the black lights made her perfect white teeth glow a vibrant blue. “Those men would do anything for her.” The woman she was referring was a tall caricature of a woman. She had large breasts that were obviously “after-market”, she was topless and bright orange hearts covered her nipples and matched the bright orange G-string sandwiched between her wiggling butt cheeks. Men were holding out dollar bills and she was allowing them to stuff them in her tiny waistband. She smelled strongly of vanilla body oil.

On other stages around the club, women danced in similar ways. Some were performing feats of athletics around stainless steel poles, others lay on their backs and only their stockinged legs were visible, sticking in the air. We’d been there for about 15 minutes and didn’t have to pay the cover as we were “ladies” and ladies got in free.

“Every woman has to discover where her power lies,” she continued, “for people like me and you our greatest power is in our sexuality.”

“People like us?” My feminist instincts were on high alert. I was always taught women were more than sex. I couldn’t believe Sister McLeod could be so backward. “Isn’t that a little . . . outdated?”

“Not at all.” She leaned in close so I could hear her better. “Think of it this way, you have an earthly body and a spiritual body, right? Sex is a function of both. Everyone today from feminists to hardcore religious wackos teaches you that we should be hyper-rationalist and that emotions, especially women’s emotions are something that should be cured.”

The dancer on the table had now removed her G-string. I had no idea that that area could have a piercing, but there you go and how did they keep themselves so meticulously shaved?

“Men and women are made to be different,” she continued, “Places like this showcase those differences.” It was true. These women were hypersexualized. The makeup, the clothing, the perfume everything announced in bright neon detail that they were women with a capital W! “When you learn how to dance to display your womanly body and how to conceal and reveal your body to your husband, it unlocks a primal force inside them.”

The song ended and the stripper picked up all the dollar bills and fives that the men had given here. There were even a few tens. There must have been at least $80. $80 for a 4-minute song?! She really did have power over those guys.

Sister McLeod excused herself to the bathroom and the noise died down a bit as dancers changed stages and the DJ switched the song. It was another bounding techno beat. I watched the new dancer, this time an athletic black woman twirl and climb the pole. It was an impressive feat regardless of what your opinion is about stripping. I don’t think I had the upper-body or core strength to do what she did. She wrapped her strong legs around the pole and dipped upside-down, revolving down the pole until she once again lay on her back on the stage. She slunk over to me, her huge natural breasts hung low. Her dark nipples were hard and covered in glitter. She was asking for a tip. I flushed and fished around in my pocket for a dollar bill. I found one and brought the crumpled thing out. It was sweaty and had lint on it.  She turned and presented her hip to me I put the linty thing in her thong. Her skin was buttery smooth. She smelled like mangos.

“Thank you, honey.” She said in a rich deep voice. I had butterflies in my stomach. As she crawled away on her hands and knees I realized I’d put a $10 bill. Oh well. Her butt was the shape of a black cherry and a triangle of white thong discretely covered her lady parts. I fanned myself. What a place! I thought. There was a humor to it all. The song lasted another couple of minutes and then ended. Where was Sister McLeod? After the change over a slow and sexy song began. It was nice to not have a blaring pounding in my ears. I looked around the club to see if Sister McLeod was off someplace else but couldn’t see her.

I looked back to the stage in front of me and nearly died of shock. Sister McLeod stood in the center of the long oval stage. Each stage was small so that only 10 or 20 people could sit around it. The dancers were close, right in your face. It was a full-immersion experience. So Sister McLeod was only a few feet away with my eyes at her ankle’s height. She wore beautiful blue suede heels that buckled around her slim ankles. The clasp was bright with diamond-shaped crystals. She wore a matching blue fishnet body stocking that covered her from toes to wrists. The fishnet was wide and didn’t cover a thing, only framed her perfect body in the crisscross of electric blue.  She wore a white bikini bottom and a white bikini top, her breasts barely fit. She poured out the side of it and heaved over the top. She was stunning.

The lights of the club turned a deep indigo. Sister McLeod walked in a catwalk down the stage, putting one ivory leg in front of the other, pointing her toes with each step. She reached the pole in the center, grabbed it with one arm and gracefully swung around. She walked again, in rhythm with the song. Each step made her bottom wiggle provocatively. I noticed the underside of each cheek was exposed. She came back to the pole and straddled it standing. She bent backward, arching herself as if in ecstasy. Her eyes were closed and her hair hung loose. She caressed her throat with her free hand. She swung around and repeated the move.

It’s a show, I thought, it’s all show. This was a practiced routine. The cheering men were silent. They were paying keen attention to what was being displayed in front of them. The moves continued, each one athletic and graceful. She climbed the pole and gracefully rotated downward. It was a thing of beauty. Money piled up beneath her feet and those shoes of hers stepped over the growing hoard.

She eventually dropped to her knees. She pressed her boobs together. I didn’t know how the top was managing to cover anything. It was little more than two triangular pieces of cloth held tight in place by some string. You could see her erect nipples underneath. She reached behind and undid the knot. In one swift movement, the top was gone and only the blue fishnet of the body stocking was left.

Oh. My. Gosh! Sister McLeod was kneeling topless in the middle of a strip club. Now that I could see her breasts full, they were certainly real. She held them in her hands and brought them up to her mouth. She licked the tip of each nipple in turn and then gently gave each one a suck. I’d never actually seen that done before. I know I couldn’t do it. She made her rounds around the circle teasing each patron with her full breasts, a smattering of freckles covered each one. They were all under her spell. She made her way to me and pressed them right up close. I could smell her rich fragrance. Not the powerful vanilla or mango body lotion of the others, but her sweet natural woman scent. She leaned in even closer and before I knew what was happening, my face was buried in the soft, smooth skin of her boobs. Definitely real. She backed away, leaned back down and kissed me. The previously silent crowd erupted in a cheer, but I barely heard it. The kiss was sweet and soft. Something about it reminded me of brushing my lips up against a peach.

She stood up again and straightened her legs. You could see the definition in her calves and her hamstrings. Leaning forward above the waist, she grabbed the top of her underwear and brought it down to her ankles. It was mesmerizing watching her butt become exposed. It was full and looked genuinely like a ripe peach turned blue in the lights. She kicked off the bottoms and they landed in the face of a slavering patron. He cheered and sniffed them. When she turned around I saw her perfectly manicured bush and the sweet lips of her sex tightly pushed together. She had shaved her dark pubic hair into the shape of a heart, a heart that rested at the top of her slit and directed your eyes towards it. She held her legs tightly crossed but soon was crouched down in full, explicit exhibition. Her outer lips parted and glistened in the light. Was she truly exited or was this a stage trick.

She danced and gyrated. Each moved displayed her parts in flattering ways to the men huddled around her. As if by magic, she produced a blue sucker and unwrapped it. She teased it into her mouth, licking the candy sensuously and suggestively. The men around the tables replaced parts of their own body with that sucker in their imaginations. The man next to me leaned back in his chair and I saw his massive erection making a tent out of his jeans.

She took the sucker out of her mouth and rolled it over the tips of her nipples, putting it back in her mouth after each one. When she took it out again, she squatted down and inserted it directly into her open vagina. It made a slick noise that you could hear over the slow, rhythmic music. She rolled it around inside herself a few times and then took it out. She offered it candy first to a man thrusting a fist full of money at her. She placed it in his open mouth and cheering ensued.

With that, the song ended. Sister McLeod picked up her cash and exited the stage. I followed her through the club, watching her naked butt jiggle with each step and her bare breasts swaying freely in the club for all to see and she disappeared into a dressing room. A large bouncer blocked the way and informed me that I’d have to wait. So I did.

What just happened. I felt like my head was swimming like it did in my post-orgasmic haze. I hadn’t had an orgasm, but I felt . . . ecstatic. Sister McLeod came out the door in the clothes she had been wearing previously. She had no other things with her. Her costume was obviously left someplace else. She had a roll of cash in her hands and gave some bills to the bouncer. He thanked her. She walked over to the DJ and tipped him and then took my arm and we walked out into the parking lot together.

Feeling the cool winter air of Las Vegas was like a slap back into reality.

“Wow!” was all I could manage to say.

“You probably have a lot of questions,” she said and we got into her car to drive back home. On the ride home, she explained everything. Years ago, she and her husband had had a little slump in their sex life. They tried a few things to get the excitement back but nothing worked. Sister McLeod went to a pole dancing fitness class. Those classes have nothing to do with stripping but focus on the exercise quality of pole dancing. She was good at it and consequently met a few strippers there. They asked her to try out for an amateur night at the club. She did and went home and performed everything she learned for her husband. That was the key to their sexual success. He, of course, didn’t know that she did this in an actual club.

“The magic worked on him.” She said.

“How much did you make?” I asked.

“Count it,” she said. I pulled the wad of bills out of her purse and counted.

“There’s nearly $200 here!”

“And that’s after the house took it’s cut and I tipped the bouncer and the DJ. What can I say? I’m good!”

“Do you ever feel guilty?” I asked feeling guilty myself.

“Guilt isn’t a sign that we’ve done something wrong. Guilt is a sign that we’ve done something we’ve been taught is wrong.” We were nearing the exit to our neighborhood.

“Who said that?” I asked.

“Me. Anyway, it’s true. What you saw was a show. I put on a show for those people and they paid their money. I didn’t cheat on my husband. I didn’t violate any covenants. I put my body on display, that’s all.”

“You . . . you kissed me.” I said, nervously.

“I did,” for the first time she seemed to waver in the confidence she had been doing everything in. “Was that okay?”

I rubbed my lips together, imagining their touch. “It was,” I said. “Teach me that.”

“Oh, honey, I will.”

Read the whole thing here: